Wood Houses : Art and Poetry Project

This is a project that I came up with a few months ago.  I used it at Christmas time for the Grade 3's but you can use it anytime.

It's a house that also has a poem incorporated with it.

Mine states:

" My House
Is warm and snug
full of people I love
and a DOOR
to shut out the
world"

(I think I was  a little stressed at the time)

The kids had a great time making them and it was fairly easy to execute.











MATERIALS REQUIRED:

- piece of wood 5 inches high, I used 1 1/2 X 3 1/2 timber ( or 2 by 4's)
- saw
- sandpaper
- acrylic paint
- wax paper
- white paper, colored paper
- pencil crayons, fine sharpies
- tacky glue
- thin cardboard or chipboard
- Mod podge
- a poem printed out in computer text or hand written

PROCEDURE:

Now the timbers I bought were 8' long.  My volunteer carpenter (thanks Mr. B) cut them on an angle in 5" sections.  He cut a 10" piece and then cut into 2.

You get 19 houses for each 8' timber.

I had the kids sand all the edges.  They loved that part.




We wrote their names on the bottom in sharpie.

I then had the kids paint the houses with acrylic paint.  No need to paint the top or bottom.Place each house on a small piece of wax paper.

The kids tended to paint the front first and then we set them upright and turned the wax paper so they could reach all the sides.

Let dry.

Take your cardboard or chipboard and cut out a roof.  We used rectangles that were 4" by 2 1/2".

You want a little overhang at the sides.

 Paint one side of the cardboard.

Let dry.

Now we will work on the windows.

For the Grade 3's I made up a sheet of windows for them.

This way they could do their drawings and then cut out the windows.

The top windows were 1"x1"
- the big front window was 1.5"x1.5"
- we had a back window that was 2" by 2.25"
- and 2 side windows that were 1" X 1.5"

Using pencils, pencil crayons, colored paper and fine sharpies the kids made little scenes in the windows. For the Christmas houses there were a lot of Christmas trees and decorations as well as family members.  Make sure you don't use washable markers as they will smear when you go to Mod podge the house.

Glue windows into place.  Make sure the top windows are about an inch down from the top edge of the wood so you can see them after you attach the roof.  The door was a rectangle cut from a piece of colored paper with a door knob drawn in.

For the roof cut little shingle shapes out of colored paper and glue into place starting with the top row.  Stagger each row so it looks like real shingles.  The kids also drew in some of the shingles with a white gel pen to mix it up a bit.  Attach roof to the house with tacky glue.  You want the back of the roof flush to the back of the house giving you a nice overhang in the front.

Print out or nicely hand write your poem.  Cut out sections and glue into place on the house.  Finally Mod Podge the whole thing for a nice shiny finish.  If  the windows wrinkle a bit don't worry everything will flatten out as the Mod Podge dries.

That's it.  The grade 3's wrote a short sentence starting with "My House at Christmas....."

I can envision a nice Valentine themed house.

See you soon.